Friday, 30 May 2008

Clarence Mitchell will speak at a seminar during Leeds Business Week, being held at Leeds Town Hall at 10.30am on Monday, June 2. Admission free. The organisers will make a contribution to the Madeleine McCann Fund.

Thursday, 29 May 2008

Globalization and multiculturalism are icons of our time. I believe a lot of British people knows the Portuguese word “arguido”. From a legal point of view an “arguido” is someone who is suspect of a crime. In another of his frequent attempts of manipulating information, McCanns' spokesman Clarence Mitchell told The Mirror that "They (the McCann) are not officially suspected of any crime.” As soon as I am the happy winner of the European lottery, the Euromilhões, I will hire Mr. Clarence Mitchell. There no best clown to entertain people, in a circus.

An “arguido” is a person who is suspect of having committed a crime, is under police investigation but wasn't yet charged. So, the McCanns are officially suspected of a crime. Another Clarence Mitchell statement, another misleading information. Nothing new. Allow me to make one more contribution to the English language, explaining a popular say, used in Portugal: “Amigos de Peniche” (Friends of Peniche).

Peniche is a small fishermen village, between Lisbon and Porto. When Napoleon and his Army invaded Portugal, and both of those cities under siege, people from Peniche promised to send food, to help the starving citizens of those cities. But they never show up. In English, there is an expression - “fair-weather friend” – that has a very similar meaning of “friends of Peniche”. Those are the kind of friends that you can't count on them when you need help, unless they can see some opportunity of a reward for that help.

But we have also another popular say, in Portuguese: “Os amigos são para as ocasiões”. In English, you will say “A friend in need is a friend indeed”. I don't know how to classify the seven (or the four?) McCann friends that refused to come to Portugal for the reconstruction of the events on May 3, 2007. Are they doing everything they can to help Police to find what happen to Madeleine McCann? Or are they doing everything they can to help Gerry and Kate McCann? I sincerely don't know. But I think I have the right to raise these questions.

Tuesday, 27 May 2008

Just a small detail I failed to explain, in my previou post. I have a health problem. Allow me not to give further details, in the name of my privacy. That's why I talked about fighting, war and victory, but against a silent ilness. And a message for Mr. Clarence Mitchell and his team: don't spend yet your money on a few bottles of Moet & Chandon. It's too soon for that.

Friday, 23 May 2008

One day, we wake up and we are face to face with it. It has been there for some time. We look for help and start to fight. Day after day. Sometimes, we believe in victory. Other times, we feel that we are loosing. It's a long war and, soon or later, it will finish. That's why I have been absent from this blog, for longer that I expected. I still hope I'll be back.

Saturday, 3 May 2008

There was talk of establishing a special Madeleine Day, to be marked by a global pop concert. Sir Elton John had been playing a DVD of Madeleine at recent concerts and it was thought that a host of big-name stars could join him from around the world.

“One of the ideas is getting all of the people who have publicly supported us to come together,” said Gerry. “I don’t just mean from the UK but from different parts of the world. We want a big event to raise awareness that she is still missing.

“It will be some sort of focus around an anniversary to tell people Madeleine’s still missing. I think it would be later this year, once media attention has dropped, to bring it back up.

“It wouldn’t be a one-year anniversary; it would be sooner than that.

“What we’re doing at the minute has its role but doing that down the line in a few months won’t have anything like the same impact. We might have a sporting event, something arts, something music. We’ve had backing from sporting people up to now.

“We have had backing from certain musical celebrities as well. We’ve got some other musical contacts who are happy to offer support. We’re not saying it would necessarily be one big concert, it might be that on a certain day they are playing her DVD.

“What we want is maximum message out there now, about her disappearance, but then events occasionally to remind people if she’s not found.”

It was a measure of how professional the campaign to keep Madeleine in the spotlight had become. There was a short-term strategy, along with a longer-term strategy – and also, perhaps for the first time on the part of the parents, an acceptance that Madeleine might never be found.

Difficult as it must have been to discuss, Gerry acknowledged what was on so many minds. “Of course we believe Madeleine is still alive but you would be incredible if you hadn’t considered the worst scenario, that she’s dead,” he said.

Worldwide support continued at the Epsom Derby where all the jockeys wore yellow ribbons to highlight the fact that Madeleine was still missing. Jockey and father of two Martin Dwyer came up with the initiative and said:

“People all over the globe are watching the Derby and we owe it to this little girl to do what we can to help.”

By now, Find Madeleine had broadened into a campaign to highlight the plight of other missing children as well. To mark the 50 days since Madeleine’s disappearance, plans were made to release 50 balloons in 50 countries, including Germany, France, Australia, Dubai, Canada, America and El Salvador.

“We will probably have 10 centres in the UK, like Glasgow, Liverpool, Leicester, as well as Ireland and Guernsey, where we have friends,” Gerry said.

“We are going to tie it in with other missing kids. We were anxious about going to their countries and asking for help in finding Madeleine. But they have said to us: ‘What you are doing is amazing and it is helping us.’”

(*) This story is no more available online. The tittle is from Gazeta Digital.

Friday, 2 May 2008

"Emma Loach, the director of 'Madeleine McCann: One Year On': 'The setting may sound formal, but the glorious garden vistas (meals can be served outside in the summer months) must make dinner the most alluring element of the hotel for most guests, and the sneak preview merely offers more incentive to get the kids bathed and bedded as soon as possible so we can have our turn come dinnertime.” - Rectory Hotel, Cotswolds, Emma Loach review

A year after Madeleine McCann, a three year old child, disappeared, Kate and Gerry, both formal suspects in her disappearance, made a public appeal to everybody that gave statements to police to contact them: “You may have told the Portuguese police, but tell us. We need to know and we want to know (...) We have not had access to that information and we want it. We want to know what has been done and what hasn't been done.” That's normal. It doesn't surprise me that a couple of formal suspects of a crime want to know what kind of information police has, about that crime...

The McCann “never lost faith in the Portuguese Police”, Mr. Rogério Alves, former president of Portuguese Bar Association told, a few minutes ago, during a TV program, broadcasted by SIC. I remember Kate McCann accusing Portuguese police of running out of budget and wanting to close the case, making the parents a scapegoat.

So, I ask again: is Mr. Rogério Alves just a stupid lawyer, not worth the large amount of money he is being paid? Is he just so incompetent that he has no idea of what his clients told to the Media? Or is he just lying?

“Breaking down in tears, distraught Kate said of the Portuguese police: "They want me to lie - I'm being framed. Police don't want a murder in Portugal and all the publicity about them not having paedophile laws here, so they're blaming us.”

Gerry McCann also told the News of the World “that Portuguese officers were looking for a quick end to the case and were exploiting apparent discrepancies in the couple's account of what happened. 'In a system that you don't know and don't really trust it's incredibly frightening,' he said.”

(*) The News of the World and the Daily Express had these same comments of Kate and Gerry McCann on-line, on September last year, but they deleted or changed the story, later – like most sites did. Anyway, there is a dozen of sites – more or less – where you can still read the McCann accusations against Portuguese police. Hurry up, before these pages are deleted: